The Midnight Club’s Cheri is known for being a liar, but there is perhaps some truth between her lies. Set in the 1990s, the series follows eight teens with terminal illnesses living in a hospice and the paranormal adventures they embark on in defiance of their mortality. The kids meet at midnight and tell stories in the hospice's library, helping each other come to terms with loss and death.
In The Midnight Club episode 1, Ilonka's tour guides Amesh and Spencer introduce Ilonka to the terminally ill Midnight Club characters of Brightcliffe Hospice, including Cheri, who Amesh explains is a compulsive liar. Cheri's lies are mostly harmless, and the teens have learned to disregard her claims, anyway. Despite her lying habit, Cheri is well-liked by the rest of the group; nevertheless, she keeps up with the guise, even with everyone seeing through it.
Why Does Cheri Lie So Much?
Cheri’s lies indicate three possibilities: she is either hiding something nefarious about herself; she is actually who she says she is and all her lies are in fact true; or she is simply lying for attention. The reality is somewhere in the middle of the latter two options, as it is unlikely that Cheri is harboring the same sinister secret as Midnight Club's Georgina Stanton. Cheri claims to have composed music on the cello, that she was a flight attendant, that she had seen signs of the afterlife, that her father is a famous movie producer and her mother is an actress, and that her grandfather invented Palmolive liquid soap (but failed to trademark it on time). Once, when Spencer’s mother finally visits the hospice, she even claims to be Spencer’s fiancée, despite Spencer being an openly gay man. Recounting Cheri’s claims, one finds that they are mostly about herself and her family, and it is in those stories where the truth is buried.
What Cheri's Lies Reveal About Her Story
Season 1 leaves much of Cheri’s backstory a mystery, and it will remain one of The Midnight Club's many unanswered questions until season 2. However, Cheri undoubtedly comes from an affluent family, as Amesh testifies that Cheri arrived at Brightcliffe with two moving trucks and a Bentley. Therefore, her most credible claims are that her father is a movie producer and that her mother is a successful actress, which would justify her incredible privilege and access. She frequently receives lavish presents, and she gifts Ilonka an expensive, luxurious wig and Amesh an unreleased PlayStation as a sign of her affection for them.
Money and gifts, however, do not make up for the love she truly needs. Every family day, instead of showing up and visiting her as the other Midnight Club characters' families do, Cheri’s parents send her more thoughtless, uninspired gifts. She lacks attention and affection from the people she needs the most, and lying acts as a coping mechanism to compensate for the neglect from her family.
Despite her disappointment, she still has the desire to feel connected to her family, hence she boasts of her pedigree by embellishing her parents’ and grandparents’ achievements. On the other hand, the hospice nurse and her peers persistently call her out for her outlandish claims, setting up the expectation that her word is never to be trusted. Her ambiguous credibility acts as permission to let her imagination run wild, and when she’s known for lying, it is easier to tell the truth without feeling vulnerable. “You don’t know when I’m telling the truth,” she tells Spencer, “which means you aren’t really paying attention.” What she does is ultimately no different from what the Midnight Club does—she tells stories to whoever is willing to listen, only she does so outside their secret society that is The Midnight Club.